Congress to Ashcroft: Go After Song Swappers 635
saikou writes "Yahoo has published a news about proposal of 19 lawmakers to prosecute P2P systems' users. Allthough Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith, said that FBI should not go for casual users but but instead to go after operators of "network "nodes", there is not enough info in the story to see if this "should" will change to "must in addition to", if or when trying to arrest major node operators fails to curtain song swapping online. Of course, questions of what to do about foreign users and foreign music are omitted. RIAA claps its hands. I guess we should expect network congestion because of users, downloading everything in their sight to beat this initiative."
How about gnutella? (Score:2)
Shut down the whole WORLD WIDE WEB! (Score:4, Funny)
Just like we can blame doom creator john carmack for inciting violence at columbine, we can blame the creators of gnutella for inciting piracy.
Lets create new laws to slowly shut down the world wide web, I mean we capitalists worked hard ot gain control of the web, and if we cant have it, no one can!
Lets show those GNU pengiun loving open source pirates that sharing is bad! Lets make them so afrraid to share that they'll be forced to work for us!
Ashcroft (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ashcroft (Score:2, Insightful)
The gallery of idiots... (Score:4, Informative)
Delaware Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden *
Wisconsin Republican Rep. James Sensenbrenner
Virginia Democratic Rep. Bobby Scott
Michigan Democratic Rep. John Conyers
North Carolina Republican Rep. Howard Coble *
and California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein. *
* We know many of these names by now, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of the other payola-beholden media-whore "lawmakers" made up the other 13 signatures.
Re:The gallery of idiots... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ashcroft (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ashcroft (Score:3, Interesting)
That's a ridiculous theory. With an intelligent, educated populace, the politics will never follow the money - rather they will be issue based and the government will be the voice of the people.
However, when the population does not have a proper grasp of the issues involved and is easily swayed by advertising - (that's all campaign contributions are good for, btw they can't be used directly in any way) - that's when I say the populace is incapable of participating in a democracy.
Re:Ashcroft (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree completely. I think the federal government should mandate at least one year of Rhetoric classes for every high school student. If we can develop an entire generation of adults who understand how they are being swayed and have been taught the skills for critical analysis of media and information, then politicians will have to focus on issues. Money can't buy issues like it can buy the swaying of people's emotions.
Ashcroft - The 4th Tenor (Score:2, Funny)
God help us all...
Let's outlaw the HTTP protocol! (Score:2, Funny)
Read more about these illegal, filthy actions and more in RFC 2616. [w3.org]
Re:Let's outlaw the HTTP protocol! (Score:2)
And I thought all these months that they are actually all busy catching Osama and the anthrax guy... But apparently 100,000,000 teens d/loading Britney are much more dangerous.
Outlaw the INTERNET (Score:2)
Lately lets thank the Al Gore for creating the internet, we all know the democrats love piracy.
Re:Let's outlaw the HTTP protocol! (Score:2)
You know full well what's the context of the discussion -- the networks "like Kazaa and Morpheus and the users who swap digital songs, video clips and other files without permission from artists or their record labels".
So, it would seem that either --
1. You read the article, but you're choosing to ignore the context in order to make that quote look bad. Result: you end up looking silly, since most of the readers here are probably sufficiently intelligent to figure out what was meant, and can see past your inane attempt at deceit.
2. You didn't read the article, chose interpret that statement in the broadest way possible, and look like a Chicken Little.
uh oh (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the rush to download everything in sight will be proportional to the rush to NOT be one of the major nodes. I mean, who wants to be arrested? That means it will get harder and harder for the average user to download his/her stuff, which is exactly what the RIAA wants. They know they can't stop the determined ones (I mean there is always usenet and IRC) but if they stop the masses it will be enough.
If they dont intend to go after individual users and I dont think they will (Napster had what? 20 million + world wide users? They cant arrest millions). How will they deal with regular users connecting to nodes based in other countries? Will they make it illegal for ISPs to allow access to certain ports?
and does this only affect P2p software? What about websites and ftp sites?
Re:uh oh (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh yeah, that's right! "starving artists!" I hear artists learn some secret technique so they don't need money anymore.
Re:uh oh (Score:2, Flamebait)
Well so much for free speech
FOOL ALERT!!!! Free Speech doesn't give you the right to steal someone's work. Free Speech doesn't give you the right to listen to anyone's music whenever you want to. How about some common sense please!!
Please use a few more brain cells next time (Score:2, Insightful)
What if the printing press had been outlawed cause it allowed people to print hundreds of copies of a book without the copyright owners consent. Dont put words in my mouth. If anyone is a fool, its you for having called me that.
Were betamax (VHS) tapes ruled illegal? NO! Yes they could have been used for piracy (and indeed were). But there were other LEGAL uses, and just because a few people are misusing something doesn't mean that no one can use it.
what next> Ban guns? Private Airplanes? Knives? hell our society would collapse if we went around banning everything that was being abused by a few people.
Re:Please use a few more brain cells next time (Score:2)
There is no need to hurl personal insults at me
You are correct. I apologize.
BUT it is my understand that nobody is talking about taking down the whole infrastructure this time--going after the super nodes or whatever you wish to call them, not the casual users, the big time sharers. And nobody is talking about outlawing p2p, mp3s, or anything else you bring up.
Re:uh oh (Score:4, Interesting)
Thar Be Network Congestion Ahead, Mateys! (Score:4, Funny)
Let loose the sails, mateys! Aye, we be setting course fer WinMX [winmx.com] fer one last pillaging, arr...
WinMX (Score:2)
Re:WinMX (Score:2)
But personally, I think that a small sustained usability issue is a small price to pay for a good P2P service that's decently fast and isn't loaded with spyware and other crap. But then again, I'm biased toward WinMX, because it's very popular in Asia and thus has a lot of anime, J-Pop, and video game music.
Uhm...EXCUSE ME!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Uhm...EXCUSE ME!!! (Score:2, Funny)
"You can go ahead and release those terrorists from Cell Block A, we have some new comers here."
"Oh, who are they?"
"Sally, Age 15. Eric, Age 17 and Linda, their mother, age 42."
"What they do? Kill families? Rape children? Run a plane into buildings?!"
"Nope, they downloaded Britney Spears latest song off Kazaa"
Re:Uhm...EXCUSE ME!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
With all these evil terrorists and executives roaming the streets, I'm appauled we're still busting all those poor innocent shoplifters and breaking up domestic disputes! Civil servants should be profiling foreigners and storming office buildings, not enforcing all those trivial matters that don't REALLY effect us! *end sarcasm*
Terrorism is a matter being dealt with. Big businesses are under the microscope. Are we to put down everything else until these matters are completely resolved? 'Cause y'know what? They won't be. Ever.
File sharing is a matter of concern. I think we all accept that illegal activity is the norm on P2P networks, and I'm not just talking music piracy (noting the bias hereabouts against the RIAA). Just because there're bigger things going on in the world, doesn't mean we should turn a blind eye to all the smaller concerns.
Re:Uhm...EXCUSE ME!!! (Score:2)
Re:Uhm...EXCUSE ME!!! (Score:4, Insightful)
1. Alter or remove the laws regarding copyright until it's legal to "share" other people's work without their consent.
2. Enforce the laws regarding copyright and those who violate them.
3. Tolerate an increasing disregard for the law, and have yet another law on the books which
1, alteration or dropping, probably isn't going to happen until either the voters make it such a priority that they're willing to sacrifice their incumbents for it, or until SCOTUS says so.
2, is what they're going for.
3, leads to a situation where people may get used to non-enforcement and then get burned later if, say, a prosecutor feels like raising his profile, and where people may feel free to start disregarding other laws as well.
And law enforcement is
Compulsory licence (Score:3, Insightful)
Alter or remove the laws regarding copyright until it's legal to "share" other people's work without their consent.
That's called "compulsory licensing," and many Slashdot readers have suggested forms of it in comments. Under a compulsory license scheme, a copyright owner would not be able to stop a particular use of a work (e.g. AOL Time Warner refusing to show Speedy Gonzales and also refusing to license it to other networks; see this K5 story [kuro5hin.org] and this comment in particular [kuro5hin.org]) but would be able to 1. collect a royalty (copyright law), and 2. declare unauthorized works "not canon" (trademark law).
Sounds fair to me. Can you see any reason why compulsory licensing would "promote the Progress of Science" (U.S. Const. I.8.8) any less than the current scheme?
Re:Uhm...EXCUSE ME!!! (Score:2)
Re:Uhm...EXCUSE ME!!! (Score:2)
By doing things on the Internet that can be monitored, you are unknowingly taking an ongoing personality test. If "I like chocolate" people are three times more likely to commit robbery than "I like strawberry" people, Ashcroft can probably produce "statistics" showing that people who swap songs illegally are three times as likely to be anarchists who have no respect for the law or the establishment, and therefore are more likely to be terrorists.
Re:Reality Check (Score:2)
Couldn't agree more. But do you really think these same jackass politicians are really going to cut-off their own gravy train? Yea, right... turn the USA into the 4th Reich -- perhaps. Become honest -- not a chance.
Oh, is the war on terrorism over now? (Score:3, Flamebait)
I'm so glad we have vanquished Al Qaeda and their like-minded brethren, so now we can go after the REAL threats to the American way of life-- the people who are depriving Hilary Rosen and Jack Valenti from the cash with which they stuff their mattresses.
Those file downloaders can share prison cells with those kids who got 20 years for selling a shroom to a narc in the parking lot at a Phish concert. Meanwhile, the evil CEOs that have looted companies at the expense of their employees' livelihoods and 401K's continue to walk around free.
Memo to Congress: Get your fucking priorities straight.
~Philly
Why not catch bin laden? (Score:2)
Re:Oh, is the war on terrorism over now? (Score:5, Insightful)
I prefer:
Memo to Congress: fuck you!
I don't understand... (Score:5, Insightful)
But it seems the suggestion is that the FBI uphold the law. They are not outlawing p2p. They are not prohibiting legal music trades. Instead, there's a suggestion that the FBI enforce the law against users who traffic in large amounts of illegal software and pirated music.
If I put up a web page with links to tens of thousands of dollars of pirated software, I should expect either my ISP to yank my connection, or to get a visit from the FBI. And I would expect many
If I do the same thing with a p2p server, however, there seems to be a belief that I had a right to break the law.
So, before we get hysterical about "protocols being outlawed", perhaps we should look at (a) the proposal, and (b) the ethics of those 'big fish' traders who traffic in warez and mp3.
Well, this will likely get a bad mod rating because it's not all "rah rah mp3 warez". But I'm an artist who needs these protections to feed my family. Sure, I've heard that sharing music and copyright-anarchy is supposed to increase sales in the aggregate, but it doesn't work for me any the genre I work in. So I need my audience to please be a *paying* audience.
Re:I don't understand... (Score:4, Insightful)
If I hear your music (assuming you're a musician), I just might want to buy your CD. Which ClearChannel station can I hear your stuff on? Or possibly MTV? With P2P out of the picture, those might be the only ways I'd hear you.
Re:I don't understand... (Score:2)
He wont release his music on Mp3.com, or sell his mp3s via a website.
If he were so smart he'd release some mp3s to napster with links to his site in them, and people wouldd go buy his cds if they like it, or buy his mp3s and burn them.
Quality, release low quality mp3s, and sell high quality versions.
Re:I don't understand... (Score:3, Interesting)
For the little guy who will never get a contract and be on MTV and be on the Billboard lists, that's probably not a bad idea. An artst with a small, devoted following might make a couple hundred dollars selling MP3s from a website (although, if you think about hosting costs, you'd have to have more than just a few dozen people actually buying your MP3s). But obviously the record industry has decided that they don't want to distribute their copyrighted material this way, and for good reason: it's not as profitable.
Yes, as hard as it may be to believe, record execs don't care as much about art (getting truly good music out there, profits be damned) as they do their bank accounts. That part isn't a shock to anyone. And that's the reason I am *sure* that the record industry has put in a massive amount of energy determining how to handle this whole MP3 situation. You don't make billion-dollar PR and legal moves by flipping a coin.
That's why I'm so surprised that people can't fathom how the RIAA can be so ignorant. "MP3 is the wave of the future! The record labels are stuck in the past!" When you see hundreds of 13 year-olds screaming for an artist who built his or her reputation solely by online distribution, that's when you'll know that the tides are changing.
Re:I don't understand... (Score:2)
how do they know its pirated? (Score:2)
Wouldnt it really suck if they ran a sting on some guy who had all the CDs sitting on a rack?
Put that in the newspaper!
Oh and as an artist myself, I want my music all over the net, theres no way i'm going to compete with britney spears without that.
By the way, as an artist, why not make your money selling mp3s? I dont understand why people think they have to sell CDs to compete with mp3s.
Re:I don't understand... (Score:2)
end sarcasm...
Re:I don't understand... (Score:2)
But then again, if the P2P services are blanketly taken down, then the artists that want to give their music away lose just as much control over their music as the ones that don't want to give their music way lose under this plan, because they lose the ability to give their music away. So, as in most things, there is no perfect choice. However, given the choice between enforcing the RIAA's copyrights by selectively prosecuting P2P users for trading only THEIR songs, enforcing the copyrights of all artists that want their music restricted by shutting down P2P programs, or enforcing the copyrights of all artists that want their music distributed freely, I have to tend toward the latter, because I believe that independant music has flourished more under the current, open system of P2P distribution than it did during the days when CDs were the only distribution method available. Besides, the RIAA isn't exactly suffering under the current system. Their sales kept going up in spite of Napster and only went down when the entire entertainment industry and most of the other businesses in the US saw a loss in profits because of September 11th.
Re:I don't understand... (Score:2)
Re:I don't understand... (Score:2, Interesting)
Ever considered that your real problem isn't people pirating your music?
Your problem is lack of exposure. Who are you? What genre do you play? Where can I sample your music? Are you a big time artist sticking up for the boys club, or a just a little one trying to scrape a living together?
Without answers to at least some of these questions, I don't see any reason to believe you.
>If I do the same thing with a p2p server, however, there seems to be a belief that I had a right to break the law.
I don't particularly think so. I do think that simply running a "node" that offers no actual content is as illegal as my newspaper explaining that Luigi's Garage downtown offered to hook a reporter up with a "hot" deal, or that half the cable guys that they had visit their bait house sold them a hacked cable box.
If the FBI want to shake up nodes, they should start shaking up newspapers first. They were the first people to actively report where illegal activity happens, and they report it a lot more than anything else. Take CNN along with them, too.
If the government and media companies want the problem of piracy to go away, its going to take the consumer to agree with them. And as long as the media companies consider us "theives" by default (enter DRM, copy-protected CDs, and CD-R levies) why shouldn't we act accordingly? It isn't like this is the sort of crime where someone is going to leave with physical harm done to them.
Sorry you're being caught in the crossfire.
Re:I don't understand... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I don't understand... (Score:2)
As long as you are not actually hosting the illegal software, this SHOULD be covered under the first amendment.
Right, and due to the first amendment if you hire a hitman to kill someone you're innocent because you didn't actually pull the trigger. Accessory.
Re:I don't understand... (Score:2)
Re:I don't understand... (Score:2)
For the love of... (Score:2)
Unless they mean "our destructive corporate culture that is increasingly abusive to the public", I fail to see how they can claim that this threatens our "culture".
The ongoing erosion of the public domain because of copyright extension...now THERE is a threat to our culture. I wonder why they don't do something about that...
Well that's good... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously folks, when are we as a nation going to say enough is enough with this legal corporate bribery? Can anyone please explain the practical difference between bribery and massive "donations" ? I'm reminded of a remark made by George Carlin, who said "this country was bought and sold years ago". Was he right?
Good. (Score:5, Interesting)
Isn't this what we've wanted all along? Make the people stealing the music the ones who are culpable rather than outlawing the methodology... it seems like the right answer to me.
Of course there's the implicit requirment (in order for this to be a good thing) that legal activities not be persecuted under this initiative. For that I suppose I'll have to wait and see. Honestly though, I'm not upset in the least about this. When folks download songs they didn't pay for which weren't given away for free by the artist/copyright holder, whatever the downloader's philosophy about it that activity is still theft. And let's face it, that's probably the majority of what goes on with P2P music "sharing" networks... that's certainly all I've ever seen anyone doing with them!
Re:Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
When the music industry charges 20 fuckin bucks a CD; with pennies on the dollar going to the actual artist; with 3 of the top 40 songs available as singles, THAT activity is still theft.
By stealing, am I taking the law into my own hands? When Congressmen are bought and sold to the highest bidder, what choice do I have?
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, no it isn't.
Sure, it's a horrible deal for the artists and should be corrected, but it's not theft. No matter how much it sucks, or how much people want to call it theft to justify their own actions, it just plain isn't.
The artists signs a (very likely terribly unfair) contract with a record company. That's an agreement between two parties who (should, if they are responsible) know exactly what they're getting into, and do it willingly.
A legal tranfer of rights is not theft.
Re:Good. (Score:3, Informative)
Copying is only a criminal offence if (a) you do it for profit or (b) you do it "on such a scale as to adversely affect the rightholder."
WTF? (Score:4, Insightful)
What kind of utter bullshit is this? Threat to culture? P2P trading actually helps to distribute american "culture", since we're also home to many of the content producers who are so eagerly traded. I'm sure the French and the Canadians would be more than happy for us to keep our "culture" to ourselves.
Threat to our economy? More of a threat than Al Queda and other nasty terrorists, willing to destroy physical infrastructure, and kill human beings?
I smell re-election posturing by politicians too stupid to know that they're posturing on the WRONG SIDE.
Move with the times people! (Score:2, Interesting)
Uh, what? I thought the CD Sales were up because of Napster?
What are they saying? They're going to target Ultrapeers? I could see how they could do this, using GWebCache [zero-g.net]. Just check the list, resolve IP's, notify their ISP, and go knock on their doors.
Seriously, though.
The Music Industry needs to move with the times. Some people would rather not buy an entire CD to listen to one or two songs they like. Some people don't want to wait in long lines for the next release of their favorite artist, and would rather download it online.
I could think of a dozen solutions to their problems. What about partnering with iPod, and creating a wireless Internet Media Database. Pay 75 cents, and get an MP3 downloaded to your iPod. But add correct Metadata, good bitstream, etc. It's so cheap that they'll (users) feel free to downloading a tune whenever they please, rather than hunting it on their computers, only to get low-quality files with blurps.
Nope. The RIAA doesn't want it's perfect, monopolizing, high-profit market to stay just where it is. All that re-thinking and re-designing takes too much time and effort. It's easier to line up an army of lawyers, and fire them at all your customers.
Their music should be higher quality too (Score:2)
I wont pay 75cents for 1 song either, thats as expensive as current CDs, i'd pay 25 cents per song, in perfect quality, in multiple formats from wav, mp3, ogg, any quality i want, as many formats as I want it in, and i should be able to download it whereever i am whenever i want as many times as i want.
Basically the should keep a list of all the songs ive paid for, and when i go to my diffrent computers i can download them on there.
Intergenerational Warfare (Score:5, Insightful)
Under Nixon an older, reactionary generation declared a War on Drugs, which was essentially a euphemism for a war on the lifestyle of the youth of that era and the values it represented (chemical experimentation, casual sex, a healthy skepticism of authority, and so on). Indeed, the prohibition of drugs and the actions that have been taken to try and stamp out its use has caused far greater harm, in both a humanitarian and economic sense, than the abuse of the substances themselves ever did or could have.
A War on Ourselves indeed, or at least a war on the younger generation, one that began under Nixon, was escalated out of control under Reagan and Bush Senior, to the point where we now have over fifty beaurocracies fighting for the collected spoils seized from non-violent drug offendors.
Now, with the new War on Copyright Infringement, we are about to target today's youth, who trade their music, their movies, their videotapes online, instead of via cassette tape the way us older folk did when we were in high school and college.
Another front on an intergenerational war, between the dinasaurs of the Jack Valenti Generation of Greed and the emerging, technically savvy information generation they seek to repress and quite possibly destroy.
This escalation will likely claim even more victims, fill our prisons even more with people even less inclined to violence than the many drug offendors who account for half our inmate population today.
Worse, we'll have to listen to even more self-righteous tripe along the lines "but these fans are stealing bread and milk from the mouths of Lars and Britney," and "we'll win the war on copyright infringement! These pirates will never see the light of day again! God Bless America!"
What's next, a broken egg on a frying pan with the words "This represents your Life on MP3?"
Make no mistake, this is intergenerational warfare, waged by the parents and grandparents upon the children who have chosen to live differently than their elders, indeed, differently than their elders can comprehend. As we draw closer to the technological singuarity I think we can expect ever more extreme examples of the same.
Hell, I haven't even finished writing a novel [expressivefreedom.org] set in 2057 that depicts exactly these sorts of events. How close is one to the Singualarity I wonder, when real world events overtake science fiction faster than it can be written?
Re:Intergenerational Warfare (Score:2)
Indeed, the prohibition of drugs and the actions that have been taken to try and stamp out its use has caused far greater harm, in both a humanitarian and economic sense, than the abuse of the substances themselves ever did or could have.
Hello Mr White Suburbia (I'm assuming), what don't you tell the people of Colombia how fine drugs are?
... star systems will slip through your fingers (Score:3)
This is a victory for P2P.
The more the United States congress thinks they have done something substantial that isn't, the better off the file sharers will be.
This will not have a chilling effect on P2P at all.
The first human face put on trial for this will inspire a journalistic feeding frenzy, particularly if he looks like you and me or the neighbor nextdoor, especially if he is filesharing documents such as "Declaration of Independence.txt " or "United States Constitution.doc"
Oh, my God! Did I just type Windows file extensions?!?
From opensecerts.org (Score:2)
JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR D, $39,324
F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER JR $21,263 (top contrib)
ROBERT C. SCOTT $0
JOHN CONYERS JR $27,000 (top contrib)
HOWARD COBLE $33,483 (2nd contrib)
DIANNE FEINSTEIN $214,638 (3rd, wow, she gets a lot of $$$)
Of course these are only the 6 yahoo news listed, i don't know how much the other unnamed 5 are.
Of those listed most have the entertainment industry as one of there top contributors, save John Conyers, I have no idea why he thinks this is a good idea.
-Jon
Re:From opensecerts.org (Score:2)
Motown Records.
This is how it should be but...... (Score:2)
P2P is a legitimate technology and technology is neither good nor bad, it just IS. If you put up pirated warez and music and your ISP finds you, you probably should be yanked. If you get caught then you should face the consequences. After all you should never gamble if you are not willing to lose.
The problem is the wholesale death of legitimate technologies because someone.... oh ok,..congressmen get paid off.
To the earlier poster posing the question
technology..500B a year industry
record industry..50B a year
who's going to win this fight?
Obviously the record industry. It's just like junior high folks, we geeks don't fight very well. Never have, although our self esteem might be better these days
In response to several people... (Score:2, Insightful)
What do you THINK the terrorists want? To disrupt every-day life, well, at least that's part of what they want to accomplish. Fact is, there's a whole country to be run, no? It's not like everything else can be ignored as long as there are terrorists. At that rate, NOTHING else would get done. That sort of thinking is actually what's allowing this government to get away with things they otherwise wouldn't- the opposition going along with conservative ideas, because "oh, we need to fight terrorism, so we should just let this go through so that we can concentrate on that."
Fact is, the government SHOULDN'T be paying attention only to the "war," and neither should we be.
That said, I don't agree with this either, but I don't think that "they should be paying attention to terrorism, not this" is a good defense. Would you also like the government to ignore welfare? Health care? Everything but war and defense issues?
Irony. Hypocrisy. Congress. (Score:3, Interesting)
Hmmm...this would be the same Joesph Biden who's 1988 Presidential bid was abruptly curtailed when it was revealed that he'd plagiarized passages in several of his speeches, and had also been involved in a serious plagiarism incident when he was at law school?
What an asshole.
who are they? (Score:2)
Can someone post a list of these 19 lawmakers and their states so that we can give them our "opinions" on this matter?
I would do it myself but I'm just about to go somewhere. If there's no replies, I'll post it myself. Watch this space.
Does this mean my machine will soon be illegal? (Score:2)
Oh, dear.
Looks like I finally have to rename my machine.
Darn. Had that name since the entire list of domain names fit on three printed pages, too...
Creating an incentive? (Score:2)
I had better go download some boybands immediately before the risk of getting caught increases. Doesn't that defeat the point?
What would the perfect P2P be like? (Score:2, Interesting)
So, I was think about the next generation of P2P. Obviously if the US Gov't and lawmakers start going after P2P networks we will need to develop a more robust, anonymous method of trading files.
If I was going to make a P2P network I would think about including some of the following features.
1) Completely anonymous (maybe encrypted?). Your machine could never be singled out by IP address.
2) The ability to add security (ie: login/password). What if I want to start my own MP3 trading club and only want to have members be "invite only"? That way you can have some control over quality and selection.
3) The ability to use HTTP (preferably port 80?) to disguise traffic and prevent ISP's or schools from blocking ports and preventing trade.
4) A built-in, updatable firewall to prevent certain IP blocks from accessing your machine (ie: to prevent companies like Ranger Online Inc from searching your machine and issuing "take down" notices to your ISP.)
5) The abilty to perform a massive DoS attack on a hostile attacker. Say some company (like the RIAA or Ranger Online Inc.) starts to "hurt" the network or tries to take it down... self-defense mode would kick-in and DoS the shit out the attacker until they stopped their interference.
6) Error correction and feedback. The ablity for the system to "weed out" bad copies of files based on user feedback. You could also have it check MD5 sums to ensure quality.
Anyone else think of things that future P2P networks will need to withstand the attack?
Pirating vs Profiting (Score:2, Interesting)
I personal wont pay 17 bucks for a CD with 1 or 2 songs I like on it. Its not worth it to me. If they were to make it so I could buy just the tracks I like in a format simliar to MP3 Id probably send a buck or two a song but I have way to many cds i bought long ago with just one good song on them. Not worth the money.
One of the major problems with the "piracy" however is rather vague. I dont have a problem with the music networks or even the software networks. Where piracy becomes evil is when someone tries to profit from it. Selling cds or cdroms is wrong. That is trying to profit off others works and thats a problem.
I used to pirate software all the time in the glory days of computers (Well before the Web) and I can say when I started I didnt have the money to buy it. I was a kid, but what I did was learn it. Ok, pirating games never gave anyone but myself enjoyment but the apps I pirated tought me about the Apps. Enabled me to get my first job and enabled me to do 15 years in office enviroments making recommendations to corperations on what to buy. If I pirated a copy of Word and then had the company I worked for buy 250 copys for peoples desktop the only people hurt by this were wordperfect(showing my age).
Piracy is ok in my opinion provided its a learning experiance. Others may argue, and there will always be abusers, but look at the ages of those that never buy CDs, Look at there incomes. They probably would have never bought the cd anyway.
The real threat is those trying to profit from piracy, What they really need is a different name to describe one or the others.
Again I think this whole thing is a seriously low priority in light of all the other problems our country has but I dont have the money to buy my own polotician and probably wont in the future.
I think the real problem however is that people can pay for poloticians, We need to get some laws against people buying them. This legalized corruption needs to go.
This will help the REAL artists... (Score:5, Insightful)
- DOJ crawls through the P2P networks, scanning your file swapping list, and arresting everyone it can find which they believe is illegally sharing copyrighted materials. They prosecute a buch of big-time file-sharers, winning some, losing others. But they get enough that it scares most people.
- The big P2P sharers leave the networks. Usage drops drastically. However, the P2P software makers are still in business, as they are now left alone. Music is still being shared, only now its stuff that explicitly has been allowed by the Artists to be shared.
- Now that the P2P network isn't clogged with NSYNC tunes, people actually can find (and listen to) stuff that isn't on ClearChannel or the other big chain Radio stations. Bands have small successes - releasing 128Bit MP3s to the P2P networks, and selling 256Bit ones on their websites for a couple of dimes. It becomes possible for a regional band to make a few tens of thousands of dollars of MP3 sales per year (100,000 sales @ 40 cents each adds up), and people start to flock to the P2P networks again.
- Big-time artists notice it. Those which are in controll of their catalogue (through foresight, ownership of their label, or lawsuits), decide that its possible now. Somebody big tries it, and makes a couple million in sales on their back-catalog in the first month. The artists drool, as they see 75% profit margins on per-MP3 sales, with nothing going to the label (or other middlemen).
- Artists flock to the P2P networks to sell their songs, and the big labels are reduced to what they really are: promotional marketing houses. Artists contract with them for fixed fees (or precentages of gross receipts) to do promotion and such, and label no longer get ownership of the music, as Artists now have the means to say "Fuck You" if the label demands it.
I'd love to see this scenario, and I think it's realistic given two BIG "ifs":- IF they really start to clamp down on the big P2P users with huge illegal catalogs, so we can get all the infringing crap off the P2P networks. Once it's all legal and above board, you can start running real marketing analysis and do the business case studies that you need to make it a real sales market and distribution channel.
- IF the artists continue on the current road of fighting to get ownership of their music. If they quit (and continue with the Faustian bargain of their soul for 15 minutes on MTV), then it's over. I'm hoping they have the backbone to stick it out.
And realistically, isn't this what we want? P2P networks with LEGAL music for us to try out and see what we want? And an economically viable way for the artists to produce music and get paid for it in a reasonable manner?Call it what you want, but sharing copyrighted MP3s right now is definitely illegal, and in the long turn, harmful to everyone. Don't do it - it's NOT the Right Thing.
-Erik
Re:This will help the REAL artists... (Score:2)
Under US law, true. Don't equate US law with the world's laws.
Debatable at best.
Re:This will help the REAL artists... (Score:3, Insightful)
1) The DOJ won't win some and lose some. Because of the way our legal system works as soon as people start being found guilty (and they will) the possibility (probabilty)is that EVERYONE will be found guilty.
2) People won't sit around to get arrested. They'll pull their stuff and hopefully (they hope) they won't be on a list yet. Assuming they "escape" they find/ found a new network using some controls to ensure anonymity and continue to trade what they want.
3) People won't go back to P2P. Sure SOME people will, but these are in the minority. Most people don't go searching for local bands to support, they want that cool song they heard on the radio. I REALLY doubt that bands will be able to make $10,000+ yearly, mostly because even if they DO release stuff it's to a smaller audience who still have to find their music. Maybe somebody would like it if they heard it, but haven't ever had that oppurtunity? They won't download it.
3a) Also, paying for music won't happen for a little bit. People won't want to pay for what they got for free last week, last month, last year. By this time a new network will probably have sprung up enabling copyrighted material to be traded again.
4/5) I doubt there will be enough money flowing to attract artists. Even if there is, established artists have already signed contracts with labels. These labels have the ability to get large amounts of people to hear/see/read about their artists music. A small start-up band definitely doesn't, and even if their stuff is better simply WILL NOT get the exposure necessary to compete with the established band. The established band will make more money than the start-up, causing more start-ups to sign with labels, perpetuating the cycle.
Anyway, that's just my opinion. Maybe I'm too cynical, but I doubt enough people will "break free" from the labels' marketing machines to let smaller bands compete financially (and they are at least comparing profits because a band will NOT say "Fuck You" to the label if they're gonna lose money) with larger bands who are signed with labels. This just means that a new and "better" trading system will be developed so people can trade their copyrighted material as much as they want.
Re:This will help the REAL artists... (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, sure, Hilary and her sleazy friends will settle for that destiny. They'll never see that one coming. Naww. No way they'll react by doing something like this:
Paying their lackeys in Congress to force hardware makers to embed DRM that REQUIRES security technology that is owned by - guess who!! - which gets licensed to aspiring musicians for, oh, say the same-ish terms record companies have been imposing on them for decades. The industry retains control over the master access valve, we get to hear the same stream of big-hit bands selected for us by assholes in expensive suits, on computers and other machines that will no longer play just whatever we want, and 99.99% of the population of musicians grubs along like they do now.
Re:This will help the REAL artists... (Score:5, Interesting)
Huh? How naive can you get?
You think the RIAA will just be nice and leave P2P software makers alone once trading of RIAA 0wn3d music on P2P networks drops through the floor? You think the RIAA will just ignore all those independent artists that they don't have any control over but who would now have more relative exposure on P2P networks?
You've gotta be kidding me. What world did you grow up in?
The RIAA will not stop until all music distribution methods are completely under their control. Total domination is what they're after and they're not going to settle for anything less. And because they 0wn Congress, they have a reasonable chance of succeeding. Oh, yeah, they might destroy the Internet in the process, but everyone knows that the only people who use the internet as anything other than a glorified TV set are 3v1l h4x0rz and terrorists, right?
Sigh...
Re:This will help the REAL artists... (Score:3, Informative)
The vast majority of of people are happy with 128. Why would they pay for something which they can tell the difference?
It becomes possible for a regional band to make a few tens of thousands of dollars of MP3 sales per year
I doubt it. Didn't Stephen King try to sell a serial novel online then give up near the end? How much better could a regional band do?
The real cost (Score:2)
Face It (Score:2, Insightful)
This is new folks (Score:5, Interesting)
Copyright infringement has never before been a crime committed by individuals procuring their own entertainment. Always before it has been a crime that could only be comitted by major distributors. After all, those were the only people copyright law applied to 50 years ago.
Stealing a song is not like stealing a car. One involves the deprivation of a personal property, and the other involves breaking a social contract.
This is new, and I wonder how long this new crime will be with us.
Re:This is new folks (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think this is either. While obtaining material that you know to be stolen (s/stolen/infringed\ upon) is illegal, I think everybody is wanting to go after the actual distributors. I don't think even Ashcroft would go so far as to say we should go after the kid who downloads a copy of a latest-and-greatest MTV single.
Always before it has been a crime that could only be comitted by major distributors. After all, those were the only people copyright law applied to 50 years ago.
Are you sure? I don't have any citations to back this up, but I doubt it was legal fifty years ago for someone to copy a book and distrbute it without having permission from the author/publisher.
Stealing a song is not like stealing a car. One involves the deprivation of a personal property, and the other involves breaking a social contract.
You're exactly right, and that's why someone who steals a car is probably going to prison for a short period, while someone who illegally copies a CD will most likely get a very minor punishment.
Same DOJ that's let M$ off the hook (Score:2)
Lamar Smith (Score:2)
Fellow Texans- DON'T REELECT THIS GUY!
Wondering why? (Score:2)
See below. Here's the profile of a typical legistator who called for this. While it's universally conceded that politicians are 0wned, one would think that Senator Feinstein would be embarrassed at coming so cheap.
To put this into perspective, if 1,000 geeks cared to come up with $500 each and contribute it under the name of a single organization, Feinstein would be a fanatic P2P advocate, even if she can't spell P2P.
OpenSecrets campaign finance disclosures [opensecrets.org]
Dianne Feinstein (D)*
1. Lawyers/Law Firms $485,118
2. Women's Issues $294,532
3. Retired (AARP,etc) $286,413
4. TV/Movies/Music $216,138
5. Real Estate $203,346
6. Securities & Investment $142,135
7. Health Professionals $112,494
8. Computer Equipment & Services $107,866
individual contributions
Global Crossing $24,000
Walt Disney Co $22,750
William Morris Agency $21,000
Time Warner $16,800
Vivendi Universal $15,000 Any questions?
Its ok to steal stocks but not britney spears (Score:5, Insightful)
Manipulating and stealing Stock ok, downloading mp3's bad.
Same is true for packet sniffing and reverse engineering. Under the DMCA, packet sniffing to make a program compatable with something else is illegal and bad. However killing competetion and cutting tens of thousands of jobs who use to work for your competitors ok. If Microsoft never existed do you think Oracle, Borland and Watcom would have like 10x the staff they do now as well as enjoy healthy competition from companies that would of existed because Microsoft would never exist. My guess is that Netscape would be quite huge right now would and its software would be a whole platform and not just a web browser. Its a shame.
Scenario (Score:5, Funny)
Inmate 1: What are you in for?
Inmate 2: I blew this guys face off with a shotgun because he didn't have my money. And you?
Inmate 1: I downloaded some Weird Al mp3's and uploaded that video of the monkey sniffing his finger and falling over.
Inmate 2: Sicko. You disgust me, its people like you...
What the focus is... (Score:3, Funny)
Need a group on Kiddie Porn, check
Need a group on Kid Napping, check
Need a group on serial murders, check
Need a group on drug traffic, check
Need a group on tax fraud, check
Need a group on smugglers, check
Need a group on file swapers
Hmmm
Note to self: Dont pay taxes this year
Ammendum to note to self: Dont pay taxes this year and move to zanzabar and start taking opium rectally
Only the masses matter (Score:5, Insightful)
I am probably going to be stating the obvious, but here goes.
Look at the big issues today. War on terrorism, prescription drug programs, naturalization of Mexican immigrant workers, taxes, corporate crime (and for some odd reason, Martha Stewart specifically), and a few other issues.
What are those few other issues? Well, one might be environmental concerns, but those only interest the masses when they effect the masses... like how those concerns will impact the price of fuel at the pump. What about where nuclear waste will be stored? Only people near Vegas are actively concerned today, along with people along the transportation routes perhaps, but for the most part, that is a local issue.
What about P2P file sharing, DMCA, Palladium, DRM, the RIAA and the MPAA. These are local issues as well. P2P is to the general public what Jesse Ventura is to Minnesota... a local problem (sorry, MN).
Here's an interesting one, though. Energy issues were, up until last year, mostly centered on California, which had become too big a consumer and was thus subject to the evil market when it came time to power its excesses. BUT, when it was discovered that a major player in that evil marketplace was suddenly responisble for taking down a major chunk of the US economy, and that suddenly pension funds and 401(k) funds and stock portfolios of retiring (and other) Americans were in danger, the problem became one of National interest.
And that makes it a problem of political interest.
When large voting blocks become concerned about the issues that concern Slashdot readers (which is NOT a large voting block, which is probably good), they will become interesting to politicians. For now, many of those issues that concern us are of concern to the RIAA and the MPAA, and since those latter two groups have a lot of money, they win.
Money can only be beat by one thing, and that is a winning number of votes. A candidate will not address issues like DMCA, DRM, the rights of the average P2P user, or most other things that are of concern to "us" until a voting block large enough to lose them an election becomes interested in it.
When your mom can't play solitaire without paying her MS subscription fees, or your dad can't get his tivo to work anymore, or when a CD won't play in your uncle's car CD player because of the silly copy protection, and when these problems are happening to MILLIONS of people, we will begin to see serious debate.
For now, it is a war of morality (a reasonably fair but decidedly nerdy morality) versus money, and for the near term, the money wins. That sucks, but that is the truth. Watch it happen.
Douglas Adams solved this problem years ago. (Score:5, Funny)
1. we "find" a new planet to colonize some where a long ways away
2. build a fleet of three giant ships full of cryogenic bays to move there on
3. divide people as follows: Scientists, teachers, researchers, etc. go on the first ship. Lawyers, bureaucrats, hairdressers, music licensing managers, etc. go on the second ship*. Everyone else goes on the third ship.
4. make sure the second ship is ready to go first, and send them off.
5. forget about sending the other two ships.
Problem solved.
* note that telephone sanitizers should not be included in the second ship.
*Cough* (Score:5, Insightful)
A high priority, unlike billions lost and hundreds of thousands of people financially ruined because of coporate fat cat fraud. Isn't it funny that people who share stuff for free have to pay outragous sums in fines and worry about dropping the soap while the people that steal billions might, at the worst, get a few months at club fed? I would applaud them finally going after the source instead of the technology, except they are going after the source and the technology and getting taxpayers to pick up the tab.
A ludicrous waste of taxpayer resources . . . (Score:3, Informative)
It is for precisely this reason that the Congress provided for civil remedies for copyright infringement including awards of an attorney fee -- so that private copyright owners can pursue their remedies on their own dime -- if it actually creates a meaningful cost to them (and presumably to society).
RIAA would like for us to spend tax money to support them, and save them the costs of prosecution. These Congressmen are engaging in the worst kind of pork by suggesting that our Justice department should waste tax and precious law enforcement resources prosecuting penny-ante civil copyright infringement cases. RIAA neither needs nor deserves such public assistance. Save Justice resources for meaningful pirates, yet, or more important, for meaningful law enforcement matters. The RIAA should take care of itself.
So, will the FBI arrest our Senators?!? (Score:4, Interesting)
ZDNet posted an interesting opinion piece back in July about how we should quit using P2P now that the Senate has. Check it out here:
http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/
The part that interested me most was this quote:
>> The Senate, which is now crafting legislation
>> that would further restrict the illegal sharing
>> of copyrighted works over networks, was
>> apparently a hotbed of illegal file sharing and
>> other peer-to-peer (P2P) networking activity.
>>
>> Last week, the Senate Sergeant at Arms clamped
>> down, and cut off all P2P networking within the
>> Senate. The reason? Such networking practices
>> were a security risk, and they were being used
>> to violate copyright laws.
As they say, "our tax money at work". The senators involved (it does not name names, but gives the idea that such activities were widespread) were not only breaking the law, they were using our tax money to do it. If you check the various news stories, at least two movies were illegally downloaded and watched by the senators during Senate hearings on legislation such as the Hollings bill. One of the videos was pirated by a senator, the other by the President of Disney.
If these congresspersons are correct (some of the ones asking for the FBI's "help" were senators), shouldn't the FBI take care of the most widely publicized cases first, the ones with easy proof, that involved public money?
After all, they are the ones who think this is such a henious crime that we have to pull the FBI off of child kidnapping cases and the "War on Terror" to deal with it.
Me, I think the FBI has better things to do than bother with people sampling music before a purchase and freeloading kids who wouldn't or couldn't pay for a CD anyway. But then our senators are the ones with all the file-sharing experience, not little old me. Surely they know better.
"Really, gentlemen, if that's the case, let's see the power of attorney given to you by Mothra."
Torahata "Mothra vs. Godzilla"
Re:Hello Freenet! (Score:2)
You could always send queries with a "hops to live" of zero, meaning the destination node is the only node that will answer the request. If you get an error, then it's not stored on that node. If you start getting data back, then it's obviously stored on that node, and you can sue them -- even if they didn't request it. (Which is one thing Freenet does insure; data is moved around without the user's intervention.) Said node is storing it and helping to distribute it, which is cause enough to slam somebody in jail for fifty years... right?
Wrong. Freenet doesn't work that way. One host returns data per key, but you can aggregate requests if one file is split up into multiple keys.
Freenet has been having, erm, problems. (As usual.) Somebody comes up with a fix for some obscure but heinous bug, checks it into CVS, and then once most of the network upgrades the performance is worse than before the fix or routing enhancement or what have you. Can't blame the developers, but Freenet isn't anywhere near up to par compared to even the old-school Gnutella clients.
Re:Hello Freenet! (Score:2)
The way to work around that is with statistics. Send 300 identical TTL 0 queries, and if 150/300 of them return something, there is a strong probability that a node one hop away is hosting said material.
The fix to that is to compute the chance of forwarding based on a cryptographic hash of the query and of a local key. In essence, you get nonpredictable deterministic behaviour.
(Note: I don't know what Freenet has done about this.)
oh im sure all of these thieves stole (Score:2)
Stole what?
lets see, did they steal the copyright from the copyright holder? no.
Are they selling copied CDs on the black market? Most of them arent.
So unless you can prove they stole $$ or some tangible object, your whole statement is illogical.
Re:Yeah! (Score:2)
Re:already done (Score:2)
One of my friends was running an anon ftp server, and he got an email from RIAA listing about 15 songs that he was sharing that they told him to remove immediately or face legal action. He removed them. is this wrong? should he have fought?
Re:Time to burn some Karma... (Score:2)
Re:Time to burn some Karma... (Score:2)
No, that's not the point. The point is to go after users--the super nodes--the big time sharers, NOT the system. Punish the people who need punishment for doing things they shouldn't.
Re:crap... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why not? As long as you're not expecting compensation for the songs then there is no difference. This is something the Supreme Court needs to decide on. At what number does "sharing" of copyrighted material become illegal? 5 friends? 10? 100? 1000? What if you laborously record audio tapes of the CDs for each of your 100 friends and send them out via mail at great cost to you? Does that make it legitimate fair use?
Congress is really showing its true corporate colors these days. It's time for a non-violent overthrow of our leadership come the next elections to sweep on these people that are consistently violating our freedom in exchange for satisfying their corporate masters. Personally my opinion is that in the digital age copyright needs to be seriously rethought of as a government granted monopoly on distribution of data. Perhaps it's time to shrink the number of years you retain exclusive copyright on a work to 5 years. Remember people, there's no inherent god-given right to own "intellectual property". It's an idea created by the governments to help urge artists to develop new works that would eventually be available in the public domain. These days with the way it works these works will never become public domain (Mickey Mouse for example) and will live forever under their corporate ownership. Something has changed horribly since the original ideas of copyright were penned by our Founding Fathers.
Just my 2 cents which are of course flamebait, a troll, overrated, and stupid. Bite me.